ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which understandings of a national identity, in this case British, are articulated in a particular setting, that of two charter tourism resorts - Palmanova and Magaluf - on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. It argues that the context of the holiday allows people to engage with representations and experiences that respond to a particular understanding of British identity derived from food and drink consumption, social space and the body. The ethnographic detail upon which the author argument rests results from several periods of participant observation, between 1998 and 1999, among the predominately British tourists who holiday in Magaluf and the conjoining resort of Palmanova. The island of Mallorca is situated off the east coast of the Spanish peninsula, in the north-west Mediterranean, and is the largest of the Balearic Islands. Tourism provides the main source of income for the Balearics.
